`Prisoner In His Own Business`

Casino Owner To Testify In $2 Million Skim Trial

September 27, 1985|By Ronald Koziol, Chicago Tribune.

KANSAS CITY, MO. — Allen Glick, the San Diego businessman who owned the Stardust Hotel in Las Vegas while reputed Chicago mobsters and others allegedly were skimming $2 million from its casino, was a victim of underworld control, a federal jury was told Thursday.

The description of Glick as a ``prisoner in his own business`` came during the government`s opening statement at the trial here of seven reputed mob bosses and two associates before U.S. District Judge Joseph Stevens Jr. and a jury of six men and six women.

The nine defendants, including Chicago`s two reputed top mob leaders, Joseph Aiuppa, 77, and John Cerone, 70, are charged with conspiring to hide illegal control of the Stardust and stealing the $2 million in untaxed gambling profits.

Sheryle Jeans, an attorney in the U.S. Justice Department`s Organized Crime Strike Force here, portrayed Glick as a person who didn`t realize he would have obligations to mob bosses after he borrowed $62.7 million from the Teamsters union pension fund to buy the hotel-casino.

Jeans` opening statement was the first official government recognition of Glick`s future role as a central witness for the prosecution. He has been under guard at his own expense since reports surfaced two years ago that the mob had put out a $100,000 contract on his life.

FBI informants said the contract was ordered by mob bosses shortly before the return of the Stardust skimming indictments in October, 1983.

Jeans said Glick, who already owned the Hacienda Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, got the chance in 1974 to buy the Stardust, which has a good location on the famed Las Vegas Strip, and the Fremont Hotel-Casino in downtown Las Vegas.

``Glick put up $2 million of his own money but needed $62 million to close the deal,`` Jeans said. ``And he goes to Frank Balistrieri, who was not even a trustee of the pension fund.``

Balistrieri, 67, reputed to be a former Milwaukee crime boss, is in prison. He and his two sons, John, 37, and Joseph, 45, are among the defendants in the trial.

Jeans told the jury that the government`s evidence will show that there were ``certain obligations`` in return for the loan but that Glick did not understand them at the time.

``You will learn that Frank Balistrieri and Nick Civella,`` the late reputed Kansas City mob chief, ``quarreled over Glick`s failure to pay $1.2 million as an obligation,`` she said.

To further bolster the government`s contention that Glick acted involuntarily in the alleged scheme, Jeans said that mob bosses placed two other persons in the Stardust as front men to control gambling operations.

She identified them as Frank Rosenthal and Carl Thomas. Thomas was indicted with the others, but his case was severed and he will be tried later. Thomas, a Las Vegas casino owner and operator, was convicted earlier for his role in masterminding the skimming of $280,000 for the mob from the Tropicana Hotel. Rosenthal, a reputed longtime Chicago underworld associate, fled Las Vegas two years ago after surving a gangland murder attempt. He is expected to be a government witness at the trial.

Jeans told the jury that the mob bosses from Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee and Cleveland manipulated the Chicago-based Teamsters pension fund in an effort to gain total control.

Jurors were told they would hear tape recordings made from microphones hidden in the Chicago offices of the late Allen Dorfman, a claims adjustor for the Teamsters fund who was slain gangland style two years ago. Jeans said the electronic eavesdropping, which began in Dorfman`s office in January, 1979, will show the underworld`s need to control the pension fund, oust honest administrators and attorneys, identify and eliminate informers and pick one administrator they could control.